


Like Stars and Ships

by JaneAire



Series: Neutron Star Collison [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Accidental Voyeurism, Angst, Body Dysphoria, Depression, Drinking, Explicit Sexual Content, Friends to Enemies, M/M, Masturbation, Porn Watching, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recreational Drug Use, Shotgunning, Swearing, Trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-19
Updated: 2018-07-16
Packaged: 2019-05-25 14:45:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14979395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaneAire/pseuds/JaneAire
Summary: Shiro took the hint to unhinge his jaw. Matt breathed the smoke into his mouth, careful not to brush his lips, even as he felt Shiro’s hair brush his temple.“You'd die for me,” Matt murmured.“That wasn't a question,” Shiro noted.“No. It wasn't.”|You didn't get a second chance at reunion scenes.Matt wasn't even sure he wanted one.|





	1. life on earth

**Author's Note:**

> Okay kids the tags aren't working well for me so quick checklist:  
> ☆ CHECK THE TAGS FOR TRIGGERS AND CONTENT. This fic is 50% sad and 50% horny. You've been warned.  
> ☆ Most of the tags above are more warning than they are promises, don't get your hopes up (smut wise, anyway)  
> ☆ Characterizations are ooc. Whoops  
> ☆ smut will probably take place about chapter three. This won't be a long fic.  
> ☆ I write vignette style.

Second chances didn't always fall out of the sky like stars and ships. 

Matt didn't believe in fate. He didn't believe in ordained do-overs, happy coincidences, or ways to paint the past different colors than it had already been dyed. Shiro came and went through Matt like the cool dessert air gasping through the Holt’s dining room from the screen door, the rare breeze just barely ghosting, floating above their sock-clad feet, carrying dust and sand across the wood grain. 

Matt had spent the first morning back in his own bed listening to the patter of feet as they filtered in, listening to the way Katie's feet stuck to the floor when she tramped around, hearing the others file in for dinner. 

Matt spent the afternoon in the attic, staring out the tower window, looking down at the gravel instead of up at the stars. From this distance, not for the first time, he spotted Shiro hopping off the back of Keith's bike, the two of them all carefree smiles and wild hair. 

Matt had spent months antagonizing over his primary reunion with Shiro--whoever the hell that had really been--and how it hadn't been quite at all what he'd expected. Shiro hadn't been what he'd expected--and, to be fair, he never expected to see Shiro alive again. 

He felt half foolish now, wondering how he could've ever believed that rigid soldier had been his boyfriend. 

Ex-boyfriend. Friend. If it had been complicated before they left for Kerberos, it was a tangled knot of labels and emotions Matt had left in the Garrison trunk he refused to unpack. 

It wasn't that Matt had never seen the tin soldier act on Shiro before. He had. It was just jarring to be pressed against his chest, feel the steady, warm rhythm of his heart, and swallow back the tears in front of strangers. 

There was so much joy, so much regret, so much raw guilt attached to that memory now, feeling Shiro-not-Shiro under his palms. Because it didn't matter that it was only a trial run, that it was a false start--none of that. 

Matt didn't ask for Shiro back. Hadn't kissed him since their Garrison bedroom. Hadn't touched him since that hand-held hug. 

You didn't get a second chance at reunion scenes. 

Matt wasn't even sure he wanted one.

\----

Shiro smiled at Matt across the table. His socks weren't his own, mismatched, one black and one striped pink, pressed ironically ironclad against the floor of the Holt’s dining room. When the sand and dust reached him, it didn't bother going through; it went around. 

There were no fireworks this time, no roaring ocean in his ears, no slow motion zoom for his eyes to focus in. Just Shiro in some beat up hoodie that barely fit, snowy hair hardly brushed, and that crooked grin that corrected Matt's theory about time travel after all. 

He tossed Matt smiles every few minutes, a knowing grin out of the corner of his eye every time he passed the rolls to Hunk’s side of the table. 

This second chance reunion--for which Matt had had no preconceived notions or wishes--proved to be less than stellar. Perhaps that was preferable. 

They'd been in the same room only a handful of times now, and while he'd been filled in on the whole motherfucking clone situation, no one had bothered to reintroduce them, take them across the room to one another, give them a moment alone. 

It had only been the two of them in a room of twenty, chancing glances at each other every so often in total silence. 

Under the table, Shiro pressed a pink sock against his ankle, a light caress, before withdrawing, all while keeping his eyes downcast on his plate, pushing his noodles around with a small smile of the crooked variety. 

“Who's ready for cake?”

\----

“I'm a little offended, you know.” 

The books in Matt's hands toppled to the floor, crashing against his ankles, making him both cripple to the floor and whine out in pain. 

He was getting real sick of this reunion bullshit. 

“Oh, God, sorry!” Shiro said, beginning to lunge forward before Matt stuck out his hands in protest. 

On the stairs, they could hear the sudden stromp of feet, followed by, “Everything alright up there?”

“Yes, mom!” Matt whined, prying the books off his feet and slipping them beside the half unpacked box on the bed, the names TAKASHI SHIROGANE & MATT HOLT #25229 scrawled in sharpie across the side. 

He had to take a moment, catch his breath, keeping his hands placed longer on the stack than was really necessary. He could practically hear Shiro’s soft voice--not the one he spoke in now, barking orders at the paladins to wash their plates and mind their manners, but the one that used to call out to him late in the night in their shared room, beckoning him over to his bunk--to take his time. 

The loneliness in space had been anxious, because, near the end, it had become a choice. He'd chosen to stay away from Shiro--Shiro the clone, Shiro regardless--he'd chosen to effectively cut ties, and he didn't fucking want to. There had been a shiver to it, to the coldness in their relationship in space, a way to make Matt feel as though he were two feet tall. He'd never felt like that with Shiro before. 

Now? The aloneness was suffocating. What do you say to heal trauma and bandage old mends that had festered, grown inflamed, effectively died? 

Matt knew there wasn't a reality where he wouldn't want to go to space, to go through what he'd gone through, just for the sake of knowledge and kindness and liberation. He just wished Shiro had never came along. The selfish part of it? He only wished it so that maybe things might go back to normal. 

It should be enough that Shiro was just alive, but even that felt uncertain, too. 

Matt didn't look up. 

“I expected you to be honest with me about the hair. No one else will so much as crack a joke.” 

He looked up.

And Shiro smiled, and this was different than before--not because there were fireworks or because Matt knew deep deep down that his boy had always been there, alive, because that was some next level bullshit that Matt couldn't stand. This wasn't fate, this was fact. 

How many Shiro’s could there possibly be, when this one looked at him like that? 

“I, uh,” God, his voice embarrassingly thick. He'd had enough reunions to last a lifetime. “I don't really have much room to talk about the hair department right now. My mom….she's gonna kill me if I keep this mop.” 

“Bet the space ladies liked it,” Shiro teased. 

He was leaned against the door, shoulders back and hips forward, that crooked smile set in place like a crescent moon painted across his face. There was forgotten stubble lining his jaw, a side effect from traveling, doubtless--Matt had an inkling, long before all of this, that Shiro had to be part werewolf because no one just got to have the world's sexiest puberty like that, okay, who got cool body hair and the abs of God himself when all Matt got was acne and the libido of rabbit?

His snowy hair looked so ridiculously out of place, made him look even larger than life, even less like the photo booth squares stuck to their mirror, the two of them pulling at each other's faces, grinning like idiots--and one photo, tucked under at the end, of the two of them kissing like the world might end. 

They hadn't kissed in years now. 

It was an exhausting, aching thought. 

“I wouldn't know,” Matt said, laugh forced, but not really. There were so many emotions fighting inside him right now, joy had to be one of them--absolute, hysterical joy. “About the space ladies, I mean. Didn't exactly have rubbers in space. Figured I should probably not mess around and get a space STI. Not to mention, I've been on resistance base locker rooms and even the dudes that look vaguely humanoid-- _hoo,_ dude, it just a Russian Roulette every goddamn time--” 

“It suits you,” Shiro interrupted, burying his laugh behind a fist. When he hunched over, Matt caught first sight of the whole arm situation--or lack thereof, he supposed--and kept his eyes trained on his chest, which simply proved to be a more embarrassing choice because, well, wow. 

“Thanks for lying,” Matt snorted. “I'll probably buzz it soon. I owe mom an apology for all this shit, and you know how much she hated my hair.” 

“Pity,” Shiro sighed, and suddenly it was evident how fatigued he truly was, glancing at the bed behind Matt. 

“Your, uh,” he continued, his snowy hair doing him a disservice, highlighting the high red to his cheeks, blotching around his scar. “Your mom said you had some of our garrison stuff?”

“Yeah! Shit, uh--fuckin’ Iverson had them strip our room after--after we--” 

“Died,” Shiro supplied, making air quotes with his one available hand. 

“Yeah. Put it all in evidence. It's mostly just junk and expired condoms, honestly, I just didn't know if you wanted to dig through it.” 

Shiro nodded, a surprisingly docile gesture. The limp sleeve of his hoodie swinging lifeless at his side, he lowered himself to the mattress to reach a hand inside the box. Matt took a few steps away to give him space. 

“You're right, this is trash,” Shiro snorted. “God, they kept your pile of fortune cookie papers.” 

“They're _important,_ Takashi.” 

Shiro paused for a moment when Matt spoke his name, and Matt watched the heat rise up his neck, paint his ears with it, before continuing. 

“Why did we have so many condoms?” Shiro mused aloud, the laughter and nervousness at the familiar comment palpable in his voice. 

“Still never used a damn one,” Matt sighed, glancing out the window, watching Lance and Hunk set off from the porch. “Unsurprising, I guess.” 

Shiro smiled, sharing with him a conspiratorial gaze. 

It should've felt familiar. It just didn't. 

Matt didn't know how to take down his own walls yet, not yet. 

Shiro pulled a book from the box, dropping it into his lap, seeming to consider it for a long while. 

He said, into the silence: “I'm going to say something.” 

Blinking, Matt stared up at him from his place leaned against the wall. “So say it.” 

Shiro swallowed, licked his lips, leaning back against the bed frame, taking just long enough to make Matt's palms begin to twitch against his thighs. His jaw clenched, unclenched, the scar stretching across his face pulling lightly with the motion. 

Filling the silence with a forced laugh, he stood. 

“I wanted to be...smoother with this,” he sighed, gaze on the floor, stuffing his hand into his hoodie pocket. The sunset light from the window filtered in through the blinds, dying strips of color across his face and chest, turning his eyelashes kaleidoscope colors, turning his silver hair nearly pink, definitely sparking. 

Matt didn't reply. 

“I don't know how we go back to normal, after all this,” Shiro began, pacing the room in those ridiculous socks, fabric snagging on the wood. “I--I don't even know who you are now. I don't think I know who I am. And I understand if you need some time, but I'd really like--” 

“I need some time.” 

It came out of Matt's mouth. It just didn't feel like him at all. 

Shiro looked at him without consent, with a totally vulnerable and unmasked expression that metamorphosed between shock and pain, finally to resignment. For reasons unknown, Matt felt his stomach clench in disappointment. Shiro hadn't even fought for them. 

“That's fine. Really. I was, uh, going to ask if I could spend the night--” 

“I need to be with my family right now, Taka--Shiro,” he recovered quickly, glaring down at his feet. “You need to be with Keith. We’ll get back to work soon and we can hang out then, yeah?” 

Shiro nodded once, robotically, before turning on a heel and waving a goodbye, darting down the stairs. He watched for nearly ten minutes before Shiro climbed onto the back of Keith's motorcycle before they set off back into the desert. 

He left all his shit on the bed. Matt packed it back in the box. 

\----

“You've been in their an hour, man. You wanna talk about it?” 

Keith was never subtle when it came to these things. Eager to avoid his own emotions, he was unsurprisingly helpful when it came time to heal Shiro’s heartbreak. Shiro waited a few beats, hoping he'd just go away and leave Shiro to wallow in this mess he'd made--both the metaphorical and the blue smears across Keith's bathroom sink--but no dice. After a minute, a quick succession of light raps again. 

“C’mon, Shiro, open up or I'm gonna have to break in.” 

In his lifetime, Shiro had cried less than five times in front of Keith. It wasn't just the Matt thing--it was the everything. Betraying everyone and letting them down, pushing back on the trauma and it's precursor symptoms as it came in and out in waves during sleep, dealing with his unfamiliar being in the mirror, dealing with being useless with one single arm and losing faith in technology. 

Mostly, it was the fact this stupid hair dye wouldn't develop for shit, and Shiro had more of it all over his face than in his actually hair at this point. 

Frustration, despite his long acquaintance with it, made for heavy rifts in his patience. 

He unclicked the lock. 

“Holy shit,” Keith murmured, hiding a smile behind his hand as his wide eyes took in the mountains of goop on the laminate countertops, took in Shiro’s massive frame sprawled on the floor. 

“The hair dye doesn't work.” 

Keith sighed, pacing his laughter inside his chest before holding out a hand. 

“Let's get you cleaned up. Go lean over the tub.” 

\----

Shiro hadn't had ice cream in a very long time. 

It turned out he could eat tubs of the shit. 

“This tastes like toothpaste.” 

“Then stop eating it,” Keith complained, flipping through channels on their twelve inch sitting on the coffee table as Shiro continued to ladell the soft serve into his mouth. 

“It's Matt's favorite.” 

Keith groaned. “ _Dude._ ” 

“I know,” Shiro whined, throwing his spoon up in the air in defeat. “I know, I know--” 

“He didn't like, break up with you, did he? He just asked for time.” 

“I know, but--” 

“Give him time, Shiro. He'll come around. And if he doesn't, it wasn't meant to be, and you two can still be friends.”

\----

There was a barrier that separated: one between Shiro and the rest of the world. 

He couldn't breakdown to Keith, because he was a mentor. He had a responsibility to uphold, to stay calm, to stay patient, to stay focused. He couldn't show weakness. He couldn't show a chink in his armor. 

He couldn't tell Keith how monstrous and deformed he felt in comparison to the smiling teenager taped in frozen photographs to Matt's mirror, couldn't say how far away and unhappy he felt in his current body, couldn't say how unloved and ugly he felt because of Matt's rejection. 

If people were willing to let him lead like this, he had to continue on being made of stone and ice. 

There had never been a wall with Matt--he'd broken it down brick by brick with his once soft bare hands, chipping away till all that was left was Takashi. He wasn't a teacher or commanding officer to Matt--and when he was, it was all facade. There was a point in time where Matt had held him, watched him break down over and over and over again as the pressure collapsed his roof of security. Matt had seen him cry well over two dozen times, probably more. 

There was a time when Matt loved him. 

Time was kinda fucking bullshit like that. 

The worst thing about all of it was that he knew there was some alternate reality where Matt still loved him, and Shiro was stuck in this one. 

Broken down and defective, he didn't have a right to expect much more anyway. 

\----

“Movie night, movie night, movie night! I haven't seen a movie since our last break before the Garrison!” 

“Don't forget your babysitting tonight, boys, so be responsible,” Mrs. Holt chided, patting Shiro on the arm and shooting Matt a serious glare. “No drinking, no drugs, no weird sex parties. We have enough rooms that I want everyone separated at the end of the night, understood?” 

“Yes, mom,” Matt whined, clotheslining Lance as he ran by at top speeds, tucking his head under his arm as Lance yelped in protest. Matt had hardly batted an eye. “We’ll be in bed by midnight. I'll send you pictures of their sweet smiling faces--after I draw--” 

“No genitalia, Matthew,” Mr. Holt called, grabbing his wife's purse off the counter. 

“Just go have fun, guys, we'll watch the kids.” 

Matt released Lance back into the living room, Shiro and Matt standing at the bottom of the stairs watching the Holt’s minivan rocket out of the driveway until the red tail lights faded from view. 

“Well,” Matt said. 

There was something about being directly addressed that left Shiro hot under the collar, just the two of them in the dark hallway, an odd mix of anxiety and dread. If the fluttering in his stomach was any indication, he was either going to be miserable the entire night or, perhaps instead, it was a little inkling of dangerous hope. 

“Nice leather jacket, by the way,” Matt commented, hands folded in his pockets. 

Matt's hair was pulled back tonight, long enough to keep in a stubbed ponytail at the back of his head. Shiro recalled suddenly his desire to get his ears pierced when they were much younger, a single hoop or perhaps a line of studs up the cartilage--Shiro had never asked, but perhaps thought about it more than he should. In the dim lights, the scar bisecting the apple of Matt's cheek seemed serrated and pale, casting a shadow across half of his face. 

He was unrecognizable from the boy he knew back at the Garrison. 

Shiro wanted to learn him again. 

“Had to get a new one. Couldn't very well go without. I have my midlife crisis aesthetic to uphold.” 

Matt smiled wryly, without his eyes, but still gave Shiro a curious glance. 

“You really don't like the hair, do you?” 

Down the hall, he could hear Hunk and Pidge howl at some outrageous sci-fi joke that either they only understood, or only they understood how wrong it was. They'd picked some horrible seventies space film on VHS found in a crate under Keith's bed. 

“It certainly doesn't help me look young.”

“It makes you look debonair. _The name’s Shirogane--_ ” 

“Hilarious, Matthew.” 

Matt shivered in the hall, wrapping his hands--wider now, squared, scarred--around his biceps, rubbing in the friction for warmth. The desert got cold at night. Tank tops and sweats weren't always ideal. 

“Let's go make sure Lance doesn't jump Allura, yeah? I'll grab some beer from the fridge if you want one.” 

Shiro agreed, heading down the hall. 

Half the couch was occupied by Allura and Lance, Keith seeming to be responsibly situated between them, with Hunk and Pidge sprawled on the floor in front of the tv, Pidge sitting on his back. Shiro knew better than to make them separate--it really was not an issue. 

“Hit the lights, Shiro?” 

He did. 

\----

Shiro took the right side of the couch, farthest from everyone, and took up with a blanket he remembered from sleepovers long ago, before remembering it had experienced less than innocent incidents. 

Before he could toss it onto the floor, Matt was back with an ambitious six pack, raising his eyebrows at Shiro wrapped in the blanket. 

The worst part of this white hair? Every goddamn flush to his cheeks was highlighted tenfold. 

“This seat taken?” Matt asked, before lowering himself down to his right side. Shiro was instinctively aware of his vacant arm, of the cold metal remains stuck there under his jacket. Matt was careful not to touch him, cracking open one beer and handing it over. Shiro fought to keep his expression neutral as the paladins all glanced up in equal interest. 

Matt propped one up in Keith's direction, who declined amicably, much to Lance's disappointment. 

Shiro took a quick swig, frowning at the green apple froth, realizing the beer had long since gone bad. He took another sip anyway. 

“Yuck,” Matt groaned. “You think they'd make alcohol taste better if they wanted people to drink it.” 

“Somehow I don't think the taste is the point.” 

“True,” Matt agreed sagely, throwing back the bottle again and chugging until the bottle was empty, cracking open another. “How long do you think the movie is? I'd like to get pretty shitfaced once the kids are asleep.” 

“Gonna take more than a six pack to take you out now. You're all muscle.” 

Shiro sat his beer on the coffee table. 

On the television screen, there was an ancient scientist conversing with a hypersexualized alien woman, wearing little enough clothing to make Shiro shift uncomfortably in his seat, glancing around at the kids to see how they reacted the blue-painted woman. The white-haired scientist pushed his lab coat sleeves up, reaching out to take her lithe blue hands, before leaning in to kiss her. 

“Ha! Look! It's Shiro and Allura!” Pidge crowed in laughter, causing Hunk to dissolve in laughter below her. 

“Get off of Hunk, Katie,” Matt barked in a clipped, unamused tone, leaning back against the arm of the couch away from Shiro. He kept his legs crossed in his direction, though, stealing another beer from the box and dragging half of the comforter across Shiro’s legs onto his own lap. 

The butterflies ripped through Shiro’s ribs again, screaming and screaming _you say the wrong thing every time._

Matt was scowling, honey eyebrows furrowed low over his dying autumn eyes. The shadows from the television turned everyone of his scars littered across his arms and clavicle an iridescent shade of blue, bleaching him bitter and battered. Matt, despite all the curves of strength that space had afforded him, looked a little vulnerable in this moment. 

He'd always been an open book. Now he appeared more to be a blank page. 

“Slow down on the beers,” Shiro instructed. 

Matt finished his third. 

\----

Lance was the first asleep. Allura left the house not long after Pidge’s uncomfortable joke. With Hunk and Pidge absorbed in the movie and no secrets to be kept from Keith on the other side of the couch, who arguably couldn't hear him anyway, Shiro shifted half an inch closer to Matt. 

“Aren't you cold?” 

Matt shrugged beneath his black tank, a bit too large around the collar, leaving his fine carved clavicle on display, the firm curve to the top of his chest, the thick slope of his neck. Every glance at Matt was a surprise--spotting a new scar, even just remembering the strength he'd acquired was dizzying. The alcohol had little effect on Shiro, but Matt's cheeks were rosy, eyes glassy, hands fisting and releasing in his lap. He shrugged. 

“The beer helps.” 

With the shrug, the strap of Matt's tank top came loose, sliding down his shoulder, and as Shiro’s eyes tracked it, uncalled upon memories came flooding back. 

“Is that my top?” he asked, a bit too loudly, causing Keith's head to quirk in their direction. 

Matt kept his eyes frozen on the table. “I--yeah, I forgot until--until I saw the blanket, anyway, it had been hanging in my closet. You'd left it here for me to sleep in during the summer.” 

“Right,” Shiro murmured, recalling two am pictures of the shirt wrapped around Matt's pillow, remembered smothering a groan with his fist so as not to wake Keith at all the stupid emotions he had felt. “I forgot too.” 

“Hey,” Shiro laughed--real laughter, bubbling up with the butterflies and flying out of its own accord. “You grew into it after all.” 

Matt smiled with an expression Shiro didn't know enough words to name. “Shut up, gramps.” 

“Gramps, huh? So now the old man jokes are rolling?” 

“Man,” Matt sighed. “You are _so_ lucky I have a loving relationship with my father.”

The butterflies crowded Shiro’s chest, pressing there, taking nest in his lungs and the halls of his heart until there was no room for air. 

“Yeah?” embarrassingly breathless, naively hopeful. “Why is that?” 

He shouldn't get his hopes up when Matt pushed himself off the arm of the chair, moving to lean beside Shiro against the back of the couch again. He shouldn't get his hopes up when Matt's cheeks turn a rose hue so deep it could only be the alcohol settling in his empty stomach. He shouldn't, not when Matt bit his lip, hands twisting anxiously in the quilt covering both of them. 

Under the covers, Shiro pressed his foot to Matt's ankle once more in encouragement. 

“Because,” Matt gasped in a laugh, beautifully breathless. His tone took Shiro back to their dorm room, the two of them laughing at some video on Matt's phone, curled against each other in Shiro’s bed, hands on whatever bare patch of skin they could find because they didn't know, not yet, that they were in love. “If I didn't, I totally would've--” 

“ _Holy shit!_ ”

\----

Shiro was not unaccustomed to panic situations. 

He'd led the paladins out of near death situations more than two dozen times, saving them, talking them through hard times, always. 

Shiro could do little more than fix Keith with a frozen look of horror as Lance and Hunk continued to scream in equal parts mortification and excitement at the absolute _fucking porno on the television._

“Keith!” Lance screamed, standing on the couch now. “What kind of fucking movies is your dad into? The scientist and the alien--oh, you know what, wait--” 

_“Lance!”_

Matt was the one springing into action, dragging Pidge back from where she'd pressed her face to the glass and shutting off the television by bolting over the table and ejecting the tape. 

“Everyone in bed, in their own room, _now!_ ” he growled, hitting the lights and standing with his arms crossed by the exit, face red as the teens slumped up the stairs. Keith stayed behind, horror struck, stuck to the couch. 

After hearing three consecutive doors shut, Matt descended the stairs. 

“I had no clue--” 

“I know, Keith, don't sweat it,” Matt sighed, dropping onto the couch, head falling back onto Shiro’s thigh over the quilt, seemingly without thinking. “Now we have three potentially horny teenagers to look out for.”

Shiro sighed, shifted, dislodging Matt's bead from its resting place. “Trust me when I say we don't have to worry about Katie.” 

That got Matt's attention. 

Sitting bolt upright, spinning, “We don't have to worry about Katie?” 

“No,” Keith echoed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Trust me. It's Hunk and Lance you're gonna need to separate.” 

“Oh,” Matt said, followed by. “Well, shit.” 

“I'll take first watch,” Keith offered, dragging a flannel blanket off the couch and draping it around himself like a cape. “It was my tape. I'll sit between their rooms tonight.” 

“I'm babysitting--” Matt argued, obviously tired, blatantly buzzed. 

“We'll switch out,” Shiro offered. “Keith, you watch till three, then Matt and I can watch till seven. Then we drag them out of bed and keep them busy the rest of the weekend.” 

“God, they still have two more nights here, fuck--” 

“I'll take tonight,” Keith offered instead. “You two can watch tomorrow night. How about that?” 

Rising, stretching, giving Shiro an excellent view of the thick roping of muscle across his back, Matt sighed with a resigned expression. 

“Are you just sticking me with gramps because you know he'll fall asleep?” 

“You're both half drunk, and I'm not interested in babysitting the babysitters,” Keith sighed, reached around to the hair band on his wrist to pull his ponytail back. “Get blasted and go to sleep.” 

“Can't argue with that,” Matt sighed, turning back to grab the two remaining beers, picking up Shiro’s half finished one as an afterthought. 

\----

“You sleepin’ in my room or what, Shirogane?” 

Thankful for the dark, Shiro froze, feet pressed to the wood floor of the hall. 

“Is that what you want?” he whispered. 

“Don't make it weird. Just get in here.”

\----

Matt peeled his sweats down his legs as Shiro shed his leather jacket, turning so that Matt wouldn't have to view his vacant arm. 

“You know, I found a couple blunts in our evidence box. If you're interested.” 

Matt didn't look at Shiro when he spoke, as a rule. 

“Should probably steam ‘em for a minute. They're probably rock hard,” Shiro suggested. 

Across the room, Matt lit a match, licked down the rolled end of the paper, and lit up. 

“It'll make the party games a little more fun.”


	2. regret me | forget me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I just realized,” Matt murmured. “I've never kissed you in this body. I've never kissed you, Takashi. We erased it all.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It gets dark kiddos. Check the tag for triggers.

“I wanna know you again,” Shiro mused drunkenly, watching how Matt's lips curled around the end of the paper, sucking in perhaps too hard, making a bit of a mess of it. 

From the other end of the blunt, Matt regarded him with cool eyes, letting the smoke fall out of his mouth into the space between them, flooding Shiro’s personal space with the uncomfortable scent. 

Matt had never bothered to guess where they'd be twenty years from now. He hadn't bothered to guess during their Garrison years what kind of adults they'd grow up to be. They had to be cool--they were goddamn pilots on a groundbreaking mission. 

Still, smoking pot in your parent’s attic, in your underpants, with your ex boyfriend, both of you sporting the worst haircuts of your life? Matt didn't expect that shit at all. 

“‘S not a question, Takashi,” he murmured, letting his hands fall onto his arms. They were sprawled across the woven rug in Matt's room, facing each other on their stomachs, all of Matt's sheets and pulled down on the floor to accompany them. He passed the blunt over. 

“You wanna shotgun?” 

Matt raised his head blearily. “That your question?” 

“Is that yours?” 

Matt let Shiro take a lazy drag into his mouth, watch his jaw work the smoke for a moment, before Matt surged up close enough for their noses to bump. The smoke was warm, wet like vapors when it hit Matt's lips, spreading across his cheeks and entering his open mouth. He lowered himself back onto his arms, eyes level with Shiro’s chest where it was pressed to the floor. 

“It's a yes, then,” he murmured with a content smile, letting the blunt simmer between his fingers. They were burning quicker at this old, but there were two more in the box, and Shiro thought maybe this should be enough for them, anyhow. 

“Did you think I was dead?” Matt asked. 

“No,” Shiro should, voice suddenly awake with feeling. “Did you think I was dead?” 

“Yes.” 

“Did you sleep with any aliens?” Shiro accused.

“It's my turn,” Matt snapped lightly, grinning rakishly. “Did you kiss Allura?” 

“No,” Shiro answered honestly. 

“Did you want to?” 

“My turn,” Shiro snipped back, before frowning, and taking another drag, blowing it out across Matt's face. “But, yeah, at one point. I did.” 

“Why didn't you?” 

“It's my turn!” Shiro laughed, crawling a bit closer to Matt, propping the roll between his pink lips, only because he wasn't allowed to put his tongue there. “Did you sleep with any sexy, humanoid aliens?” 

A pause, then an amendment. “Well, any aliens?” 

“No, dude. Space STIs aren't hot.”

“That's the only reason?” 

Matt sighed, ruggedly puffing out smoke without pulling the blunt away. “I thought you were dead. Shit still hurt. If I didn't sleep with you when we were together, what makes you think I was gonna fool around with some space chick with ambiguous genitalia?”

“Is that your question?” 

Matt shot him a challenging look. “Do you want it to be?”

Shiro had an answer for it, but shook his head no. 

“Why didn't you kiss Allura?” Matt asked, dying autumn eyes glassy as they gazed at back at Shiro. 

In his stomach, the butterflies were dying. A conglomerate mix of smoke and booze, he felt them drown and fizzle out, forgotten, his eyes tracking the lines of Matt's chapped lips as his teeth worried at the skin. 

“Because I was still in love with you,” he answered honestly. 

Matt took a drag and held it, letting the blunt hit the wood, before leaning up on his elbows to tangle his hands up in Shiro’s hair. Cupping his hands just behind his ears, his thumbs were able to dance across the apples of his cheeks, just below his slate gaze. Dropping his hands, he let his thumbs trace down the curve of Shiro’s cheeks, the rough cut to his jaw, before jogging back up to thumb roughly at his lips until Shiro took the hint to unhinge his jaw. Matt breathed the smoke into his mouth, careful not to brush his lips, even as he felt Shiro’s hair brush his temple. 

“You'd die for me,” Matt murmured. 

“That wasn't a question,” Shiro noted. 

“No. It wasn't.”

“Did you stop loving me?” Shiro exhaled the rest of the smoke. 

“Skip.” 

“Matt--” 

“Pick another question.” 

“Hey--” 

“Pick another fucking question.” 

Matt felt almost guilty, watching how tired Shiro’s eyes became as they downcast, eyes going from glassy to overcast at a moment's notice. 

“What were you going to say about my hair, downstairs? Do you like it?” 

His eyes took their time mapping up Shiro’s face with a glassy, absent sort of look. Maybe it was the alcohol, or the pot, or the fact Shiro slowly realized he'd forgotten to eat again, but the butterfly corpses seemed to begin to fester and settle at the bottom of his stomach. When Matt's gaze reached his own, it skipped over Shiro’s consciousness, vacant. 

Matt really wasn't Matt anymore.

Shiro didn't have much room to talk. 

“I like it,” Matt mused. “You finally match.” 

White eyebrows furrowed low over slate eyes. 

“What's that mean?” 

“Don't waste a question,” Matt chided, taking the last good drag off the blunt before surging up to cup Shiro’s neck none too gently. Using his nails to drag him close, Matt fisted his other hand the collar of Shiro’s undershirt, pacing himself with a knock of their noses. The skin of Shiro’s scar was rippled and thin, softer perhaps than the rest of his skin, if not more dappled with imperfections. Matt let the smoke float across his tongue for a moment, let his eyes slip closed, pressing the tip of his nose against Shiro’s cheek and nuzzling the skin there. 

Shiro parted his lips. 

Matt breathed out. 

“I just realized,” Matt murmured. “I've never kissed you in this body. I've never kissed you, Takashi. We erased it all.” 

Shiro had to excuse himself to the bathroom to throw up the soured alcohol and bile. 

\----

Shiro took the floor. 

If Matt's bed had barely accommodated them in highschool, it would be nearly impossible now. They only managed the feat back in the day if Shiro lowered himself down first, spread his legs and let Matt curl up against his chest, kissing each other and whispering giggles most of the night. 

There was no moon tonight, the glint of unfamiliar stars their sole illumination through the window. 

Matt’s half drunk mind concocted some malformed metaphor about the dead stars you could still see and the alive ones that you couldn't. It related to them, somehow. He just didn't have the time to articulate it. 

“You wanna be together again, don't you?” 

The room was cold, having forfeited most of the sheets to Shiro, but the goosebumps creeping up his neck had other origins. 

So soft Matt could hardly make out, a murmur: “I just want us to be normal again.” 

Matt knew he was drunk now, feeling his first real stab of anger in Shiro's presence for a long while. 

“We fucking passed normal awhile ago, in case you noticed,” he hissed, throwing back the sheet and sitting up. 

Stalking across the room to the lamp--nearly tripping over Shiro in the process--he successfully set off a collection of star projections, shining warm light onto the ceiling as Matt fished through his closet for something warmer than boxer shorts. 

“Do you have _any_ idea--fuck--” Matt bit down on his lip. 

A moment. 

A soft, “take your time. I'm listening.” 

Matt felt his face contort, glad his back was to Shiro, glad they were both half drunk, half high enough to maybe forget the next morning how wet and pathetic his answer came. 

“Do you know how angry being with you makes me?” 

Matt wasn't sure what shirt he was holding, but it ripped down the collar. It was probably too small now, anyway. 

There was another pause. 

“I,” Shiro sighed. “I think I get the idea. I'll go.” 

Stumbling over his bare feet, Matt hardly made his way to stop Shiro from rising. “Don't, I just--” 

“Take your time.” 

_“I know.”_

\----

Matt pulled the photo booth slides from where they were pressed to his mirror and fell to the floor beside Shiro in a catatonic sort of silence. 

“I was so ready last time,” Matt swallowed. 

Shiro watched him rapt, recounting this moment to memory, wondering with a painful sob if this would be the last time he were allowed to trace such vulnerable masks etched on to Matt's face. 

“To be with you again,” he clarified. A snort, mirthless. “And you--whoever he was--couldn't give less of a shit. I felt so much, God, I'd been grieving your death for months--grieving the fact I'd never see my family again--and there you were and you,” Matt paused, gasping. 

“He _held_ me, Takashi. Pulled me into his chest in front of everyone and the things it did to my fucking _heart--”_

Shiro had never seen such disgust and hatred blatant on Matt's face. 

“And all I was left was feeling guilty because I should've just been happy that you were alive, right? No. Because you weren't. You weren't and I didn't even know. Some fucking soulmate, right?” 

Shiro flinched, watching Matt unfold the hidden slide that he kept tucked in the back, the one of them locked at the mouth, early and innocent and secret from so long ago. 

“Then you show up again, looking like this? You don't even look like you!” he hissed, voice raising to a level higher than acceptable. 

Shiro didn't have a right to protest. 

Matt's clumsy fingers pointed hapless at the photos, smearing oil across the frames. “This is you! You don't look like him and--fuck, I don't even look like me--but--” 

Frustrated, he threw the paper across the room, growling when it landed with a dull _thwack_ on the floor mere inches away.   
“Am I supposed to believe you're you, now? There are odds, Shiro, numbers I have to consider. I can't just risk that. Loving you isn't worth all that goddamn confusion and heartbreak. Would you even know if you're really you or not?” 

Shiro was silent, eyes on his limp hand in his lap, seemingly as useless as the other. 

“That a question?” he murmured. 

Matt said nothing. 

“I don't know, Matthew.” 

Matt shut off the lamp, crawled into bed. 

Shiro peeled the pictures off the floor and wiped them clean with his shirt. He slipped it in his hoodie pocket. 

It was bought with two of his quarters, afterall. 

\----

“I wish Mom was here.” 

Matt was hungover, face plastered to the dining room table. The four paladins sitting at the table anxiously watched him peel his green face from the wood to glare at his sister. 

“Shut up,” he said. 

Shiro snorted mirthlessly. From the kitchen, Keith was studying Shiro curiously as he flipped pancakes out onto a plate, Allura hopped on the counter beside him, watching.   
“What?” Shiro mouthed, accidentally catching Lance's attention. 

Keith shook his head, went back to the pancakes. 

“What's the plan for the day, big man?” Lance asked instead. 

_”Sleep,”_ Matt moaned, hands stuffed up in his kinked hair, half knotted in and half out of his ponytail. “We're sleeping.” 

“The thing is,” Pidge supplied, pushing her glasses up on her nose. “I couldn't sleep last night, so I made about give or take fifty combustible pvc pipes and I thought we could shoot them off tonight.”

Shiro had to hide his smile behind his coffee mug--one that belonged to Mr. Holt, jokingly read #1 DAD across the ceramic--and murmured low enough that only Matt could hear, “told you we didn't have to worry.” 

“Of course you did,” Matt sighed. “Of course you made pipe bombs. Because that's what girls your age like. Pipe bombs.” 

“If you don't let me I'll just tell mom and dad you let us have an orgy.” 

“Oh, _fuck_ you, Katie.”

“He's just a grump, Pidge, don't let him bother you,” Shiro assured. “Wait till it's night and be safe about it, please. Gloves, long sleeves, safety goggles. Don't make me print out the Carol poster.” 

“She had such a long life ahead of her,” Hunk sighed. “If she had only worn her lab gear.” 

“Shut _up.”_

\----

“You, uh. You wanna be alone?” 

Shiro barely had the energy to turn and face Keith from where his head poked just over the top of the tree house ladder. 

“No,” Shiro sighed. “I shouldn't be.” 

Nodding, Keith lithely hoisted himself up into the box beside Shiro, crossing his legs and letting his knees rest on the unfinished wood. Keith gave him a moment of silence to collect his thoughts. 

The issue with that was, Shiro was just better off not thinking much at all. Without strategy, without war, without titles, and without the Lions, Shiro was just a civilian again. He was left with little to do but contemplate his trauma and this fucked up hand of luck life had thrown at him. 

Life on earth was a lot more complicated than he'd remembered. 

“Where's--” 

“He's sleeping off the hangover,” Shiro covered quickly. He didn't want to hear his name. Not yet. 

Keith shifted, eyes skirting over Shiro in a concerned sort of way--they way they had been since Keith had come home. It was an uncomfortable feeling, having their roles be reversed like this. Shiro was so used to parenting him--

Shiro couldn't remember the last time he'd even asked Keith if he felt okay. 

“I made things worse, didn't I? Leaving you two alone,” Keith murmured. “I thought it might help, but--” 

“It did,” Shiro sighed. He leaned his head back, letting it fall against some forgotten Apollo mission poster still taped the wall. The memories came back like flashes, remembering he and Matt studying up here with the fairy lights on, the stereo playing softly in the background. “Thanks, Keith. Just...not the way I wanted.” 

Keith waited for further explanation. 

“We talked.” 

“And?”

Shiro shrugged. His body didn't feel quite like his own, as if, when he spoke, his voice might be across the room instead. 

“He hates me. Which is fine.” 

“Hates you?” Keith hissed. “That--that can't be right.” 

“I don't want to get into specifics right now, Keith, can we drop it?” 

\----

They sat up there till dark, hardly speaking. From here, Shiro could make out the outline of the attic window, could see the shadow of someone passing inside every so often. 

Matt was looking for him. 

Shiro laid down.

\----

The first pipe bomb went off sunset. 

“Farther out, guys! I don't want the shrapnel to hit the house!” 

Shiro chambered back in the tree house window, watching the sparks turn into orange clouds. 

He'd had enough bombs for a lifetime. 

“They should've done a pressure cooker. Would've been safer,” he sighed, dragging a hand over his face. 

He wished he could've gone back to the shack and rested, for just a moment, for an hour or two, just to rest. 

Keith was watching him. 

The second bomb went off, followed by cheers. 

“You told me something a long time ago,” Keith said, folding his hands in his lap and suddenly taking a great interest in them. 

“I tell you a lot of things I don't wanna hear right now,” Shiro sighed, close to frustration, close to tears as the third bomb shook the tree house with energy, making Shiro's core tremble. It felt like an elephant had taken resident on his chest, crushing the air and splintering his ribs till his skull cracked. 

“You told me that guilt is a selfish emotion.” 

Yeah. He had said that. 

“I heard it on Dr. Phil.” 

“Regardless,” Keith huffed impatiently. “If you're so focused on how bad you feel about being gone--about _dying_ \--and what happened to Matt, dude, you're only wallowing inside yourself. He's not going to want you unless you're comfortable with yourself again.” 

Shiro took a steadying breath. “I'm. I'm not sure that's ever going to happen again.” 

“Just pretend,” Keith assured, leaning forward to wrap his arms around his brother as the fifth blast went off, feeling him quake a bit against his chest. 

“Go shower,” he instructed. “You stink.” 

\----

The sixth blast went off. 

For just a moment, Shiro forgot where he was.

\---- 

Shiro turned the shower into a time machine.

No more noticing how different his body was. No more worrying about aliens. No more worrying about Matt. 

Hapless thoughts. Seventeen again. 

\----

In Holt’s guest bathroom, Shiro made an attempt to objectively study his new body. 

The soap in the dish left a trail across the mirror as Shiro struggled with his left hand to trace the outline of his body, going over the mountains of his shoulders and the broad plane of neck. Stretching to get his right side, difficult as it was, proved easier as he slashed a line down where he shoulder tapered into nothingness, the silver fastening at the stump still hanging on. Shiro had the inkling taking it off meant losing more of his shoulder, meant making his next prosthetic worse off than the last. 

He wasn't even sure he wanted a new one. 

The white hair could be worse, he supposed, reaching under the cabinet to retrieve clippers, shearing himself out a new undercut from the growth. The top curls were getting long enough to tangle, but he really only trusted Keith to trim up his bangs. Pushing the wet grey strands aside, he leaned into the examine his face. 

He was arguably handsome, he supposed. Underneath the garish scar horizontally bisecting his face, he looked the same, if not a little older, a little paler, a little sadder. Shadows lurked across his countenance now, under his eyes and blossoming like bruises in the hollows of his cheeks. 

Between his eyes, his eyebrows were always pinched flat. His lips were always turned down. Had it been like that before? Had he always been scowling? He used his finger a few times, swiping between his eyes, forcing the skin to relax, feeling the tension fade. 

Haggar had done an excellent job replicating his minor scars and imperfections across this body from a shallow slash across his pectoral to the dotting of moles across the valley of his ribs. 

Touching them brought back memories of a body he didn't have anymore. 

It wasn't fair. None of it was fair, how much this body didn't belong to him, how much the other one hadn't either. He should be able to look at himself without thinking of his death, without thinking of how eagerly Matt used to press his mouth across Shiro's bare skin like he'd been starving. 

This body should belong to him. 

It just didn't. 

Shiro let his left hand wander, skating across his bare stomach with chapped fingertips, marveling at the fact that there was sensation accompanying it. He spent a few moments like that, looking down and watching the muscles in his stomach twitch, looking up and tracking his own hand in the mirror. Alternating between tripping fingertips and skipping nail tips, enjoying the dull tickle of it, memorizing the smoothness of his stomach when it was unflexed--abs appearing and disappearing at will. He touched his chest, his throat, the line of now pale hair below his navel. 

Gulping for air, he glanced back the mirror and dropped his towel. 

He'd been careful not to look, not really wanting to know too much, but, uh--

Haggar got the dick right. Super. 

Letting his hand drop once more, pointedly avoiding the apex of his legs, he let his hand wander down to the thick of his thighs, tracing out the unscarred skin there, save for the pale lightning lines across his inner thighs. 

He withdrew his hand. Glanced back at his face. 

He'd never unpacked his makeup kit from his overnight bag. 

Eyeliner wouldn't fix everything, but it would certainly make him feel better. 

\----

“Ayy! Dad's lookin’ good!” 

“Suns out guns out!” 

“Settle down,” Shiro huffed, cheeks red as he stalked back into the dining room, giving the kids high fives nonetheless as they offered up their palms. “How'd the bombs go?” 

_”Great.”_

Shiro let Pidge chatter as he slid into the kitchen, ignoring Keith's oddly proud and pitiful gaze as he handed off a pizza slice to him. 

“Haircut looks nice.”

“I'll have you do the bangs, if you don't mind.” 

“Nah,” Keith said, still roaming over Shiro's appearance, eyebrows high at the sleeveless shirt he was wearing. “You going out?” 

He hadn't planned on it. Maybe he should. 

“Who's going out?” Matt's voice called, rounding the corner into the space. 

He stopped short when he saw Shiro, brushing his own wet curls back off his face. Matt had already slipped into his pajamas, face somehow scuffed with a bandaid applied to his jaw. 

His expression wasn't one for the movies, awe struck and impressed with Shiro's sudden Cinderella transformation. It was all confusion, eyes roaming--under it was the anger Matt kept on reserve, barely boiling under the surface of his skin. 

“Hot date, Takashi?” Matt said, looking away again, uninterested as he headed to the table. 

“Thought I might go out and pick up some smores supplies for the kids.” 

“Mm.” 

Shiro felt the eyes roaming between them, the tension suddenly out in the open, palpable. 

Shiro wouldn't involve the paladins. 

“I'll come with you,” Allura offered, letting her hair down so that it eclipsed her markings. “Can we go to the 7/11? The slurpees are rather addictive.” 

“Grab me a cherry!” 

“Got it,” Shiro echoed, snagging Keith's bike keys off the countertop. 

\----

Matt watched Allura slide into the back of the bike, wrap her arms around Shiro's waist with a nervous laugh, press her face between his shoulder blades. Her spine arched around his, so close that their thighs brushed. 

Matt went for a walk. Keith could babysit for a few hours. 

\----

“I think it's important that we finish that movie. It has great educational value. Pidge still hasn't had health class--” 

Keith pressed his palms against Lance’s shoulders, forcing him up the stairs. “Bed, Lance.” 

“You think you're so cool just because you're two years older.” 

“I've always been cooler than you.” 

“As if!” 

Allura, from her place beside Shiro, still managed to look regal in the light of the bonfire, chocolate smeared across her fine lip. Drowsy, she let herself drop her head against Shiro's shoulder, the white type four of her hair melting in with Shiro's, tangling them together. She let her right arm, tan and soft, rest against his left. The contact was pleasant, reassuring. It didn't make his chest ache, didn't make him want to be filled, overwhelmed, just to forget how empty he felt. 

Being with Allura would be easy. 

He let her thread their fingers together, limply, the weight of her palm a pleasant distraction from the way Matt's gaze hadn't left his since Shiro sat down. 

From across the fire, Matt regarded what a lovely couple the two of them would make. 

“You gonna stick around, Princess?” he asked cheerily, more himself with the others, a jarring comparison to the man who had skewered Shiro's heart last night. 

“I'm afraid not. I promised Romelle she could show me something tonight.” 

Matt quirked an eyebrow. “That so?” 

Allura nodded, dislodging Shiro's temple from where it had pressed against the crown of her head. 

“She said it was a surprise. I'm rather nervous--but I should be going.” 

\----

“All that time in space,” Matt mused, eyes watching the embers begin to dye out. “And we were never alone once. Couldn't get you to look at me. And now that I don't wanna see your face it's always just the two of us. How do you like that?” 

“I think I should go,” Shiro sighed, rising, thumbing under his eyes to remove the smear of his melting eyeliner. 

Matt didn't look up. “I didn't ask you to go.” 

“I'm done playing games, Matt. If you don't want to be friends just tell me. I'm sorry. For everything--” 

“Calm down,” Matt sighed, rising, dumping water on the embers. “And come to bed. We're playing another game of twenty questions.” 

\----

He shouldn't let Matt touch him, but he does. 

God, he does. 

\----

Shiro shut the door to Matt's room, turning, only to find Matt standing just behind him, one hand half outstretched in the distance. 

“I wanna try that normalcy thing you're so cracked up on,” Matt murmured. “Wanna be sweet. Can I?” 

Shiro wasn't quite sure what he was asking, but nodded, and Matt leaned forward to run his finger tips down the smooth bicep of Shiro's arm, tracing back roads around the scars, the still healing bruises. He pressed a fist to his right chest, bracing himself there. 

Whatever gravity Shiro possessed drew Matt in the rest of the way, until all of Matt's side was flush against him, trembling, fingers shaking as they traced the curve of his shoulder. Matt pressed his head up under Shiro's jaw, letting his hair tickle him there, nuzzling till Shiro was back into the door. 

Matt's curious hand tripped upwards, ignoring the strap of Shiro's tank top, skirting violently up his neck to cup his jaw. 

“Your stubble is still dark,” he mused, running his palms across the scruff, watching Shiro watch him with that smooth glide eyeliner gaze. Matt used his thumbs to pull at his lips again, more tender than last night, and scraped the inside of his wrist red against the stubble of Shiro's neck. 

Crowded against the door and nowhere to go, Matt dropped his hands, letting them have free reign once more, wrapping around to Shiro's back and pressing up to the warm skin beneath his shirt. Fingers splayed, Matt pressed till they were flushed, till Shiro could feel him trembling, overwhelmed and smoldering.

Behind his own back, Shiro kept his hand in a shaking fist, careful not to push Matt too far. 

“You okay?” Matt murmured against the column of Shiro's throat, wet lips brushing, causing Shiro to shiver against him, involuntarily knocking their hips together. 

Not trusting himself to speak, he nodded. 

“You can touch me,” Matt assured with a careless laugh, his voice sounding like his own again, lighter, less angry. 

When Shiro made no move, Matt pressed closer, burrowing his nose against Shiro's right shoulder. “I want you to touch me, Takashi.” 

His hand moved of his own volition, scooping quickly to clasp Matt's chin, forcing Matt to look at him, really look at him. 

_I don't wanna see your face._

“Can I kiss you?” Shiro asked. 

He'd asked the same question years ago, the two of them burrowed in a bunk bed, and Matt's face had colored in absolute surprise, eyes wide and eager. The innocence was gone, now, replaced by something cool and vacant. 

Matt, even when he was looking at him, wasn't looking at him. Not really. 

“Is that your question?” Matt purred, smile terrifyingly coy. 

In his veins, Shiro's blood ran cold. 

“What's yours?” 

The smile against his shoulder was palpable, warm, quasi-familiar in the darkness. 

“Do you still love me?”

\----

Shiro ran.

\---- 

Keith returned the shack the next night, wordless, and gave Shiro his space. 

\----

Matt didn't call. 

\----

Two days turned to two weeks, to two months. Matt didn't call. 

They both went back to work at the Garrison, new uniforms, new hair. Shiro applied his eyeliner like religion every morning, coifs his hair, just in case they pass in the hall. 

They'd been too busy inspecting what was left of Shiro's arm to even discuss Kerberos. The Garrison didn't put them on missions together. 

Shiro let go. 

\----

Eight weeks passed. 

Matt never called.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoops.


	3. binary stars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They were smart kids, turning into dumbfuck adults. It happened to the best of them. They knew better, Matt supposed, than to believe in firework kisses and unconditional love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ☆Mind the tags again, this one is a little dark kiddos. Promise there's a happy ending.   
> ☆Reminder that I write vignette style and thus some of these segments are out of order for mechanics sake.   
> ☆I accidentally lied: smut won't be until next chapter, but, hey, a whole chapter of smut.

Overcast, the skies crackled and groaned as Matt finally exited the truck cabin, letting his boots crunch against the gravel of the drive. Someone recently had painted the mailbox out front, planted withering succulents near the dusty windowsills. For the first time since Matt had laid eyes on it, the shack looked more like a home than the dusty remains of forgotten childhood.

He hesitated on slamming the truck door, knowing full well once he did, any chance of disappearing and turning tail would be gone. Once he shut the door, whoever was inside would know he was here. 

Shiro would know he was here. 

The purple sky roared again, cracked with heat, rocketing blue sparks across the clouds. The air felt surprisingly heavy with moisture. Desert rain was a contradictory sort of thing. He should go back home and buckle in for the night. 

From the passenger seat he pulled the cardboard box he'd so snuggly buckled in, cradling it to his chest, careful not to jostle the parts. He really didn't want the contents getting rusty before he could even deliver it. 

He really fucked up this time. 

\----

“What do you mean Shiro went home?” 

Keith, it appeared, was in little mood to take pity on how absolutely shit faced Matt had gotten. 

“He's,” Matt sighed heavily, dropping his face back onto the floor. A guest bedroom. Keith's. Lance's? He lost track. Wrong room for comfort, anyhow. 

He moved a lazy hand up to wipe his face, wipe off the snot and tears and drool he'd collected since Shiro had pushed Matt against the bed and bolted. From the swipe across his cheek, Matt's palms came away with black streaks, creamy and dark. Shiro's eyeliner. Fuck. 

“He's what?” Keith demanded, moving until his boot was planted inches from Matt's nose. “What did you do?” 

_“I didn't--”_

Oh. Oh, but hadn't he? 

Matt sighed again, loud, flailing his arms back until Keith kneeled beside him, fisting his fingers in the fabric of Matt's shirt and dragging him half off the ground. 

“Gone,” Matt sighed. “Gone home. Took your bike.” 

Keith swore under his breath, letting Matt fall back to the floor with a sharp crack, skull bouncing once then twice against the hardwood. 

“You turned out to be a real piece of shit, you know that?” Keith hissed, toeing none too gently at Keith's abdomen. “We all went through shit. It sucked. It doesn't give you the right to yo-yo him and tell him how much you hate him then ask him to suck you off.” 

“Funny,” Matt said, sliding back away from Keith's boot, wincing when his ribs felt sore under his palm. “Was gonna say the same shit about you.” 

If Matt had been sober, Keith's self control would've been evidently impressive. 

Keith wanted to fucking terrify him, beat him shitless, because, fuck, Shiro deserved so much better than he got. He wanted to tell Matt to not bother coming by again, just to leave Shiro alone until the end of time. 

Shiro was entirely made of scar tissue, forgotten mechanics from a space daydream they'd shared as a collective, more evident back on Earth than ever. Surely his heart could scab back over and forget him, move on, learn to be okay again. 

But hurting Matt meant hurting Shiro, and Keith wouldn't do that. Not to Shiro. Not again. 

“I'm babysitting for one fucking day,” Keith hissed. “Sober up, then I'm going home to look after my brother.” 

Keith had been gone several minutes by the time Matt slurred, “So, we aren't friends anymore, huh?” 

\----

To be honest, Matt couldn't say what he expected. 

He felt numb. When he wasn't numb, he was angry. When he was angry, he wanted to be numb, so he made himself numb, and he pushed out memories from before. 

The paladins left the house. 

Shiro, the ever responsible ever considerate one, didn't come back. So he'd decided to look out for himself, then. 

It was wise. 

Matt was breaking down. 

\----

Galaxy Garrison ordered that he attend therapy. Whether it was protocol, or the fact Matt had broken down during their last examination of him--pushing past a nurse and pulling his clothes back on, choking back tears and swallowing down on obscenities because he was still a fucking soldier, dammit--he wouldn't be allowed to begin involvement and aid to their new security tech until he “got his head on straight.” Whatever that had meant. 

He relayed it to Katie, biting back on the _I’ve never had my head on straight, or any other part of me for that matter._ For half a moment, he considered calling Keith just to tell him the joke. 

The funny thing about pushing everyone away, burning all your bridges, was that every time you remembered all your old friends hated you it still felt like ice water sliding down your back and shocking your body into adrenaline. 

\----

It should've been enough that Shiro was alive. 

\----

_Knock, knock, knock._

“‘Way, Katie,” Matt growled, half muffled by his pillow, face embarrassingly wet. Night four of skipping dinner, Matt didn't have much to say, didn't have much room to stomach any food. 

_Knock, knock, knock._

Persistent again. Harder. 

“Open up, asshole. I'm trying to help you here.” 

“Go away,” Matt moaned again, embarrassed when his voice came out wet against the open air. 

The thing about burning bridges, Matt realized too late, was when you fucked up enough that you've got no one left, there's no one to explain to the people that need you why you've fallen apart. 

Katie didn't know about he and Shiro. None of the others did. Keith was only privy to the information because he'd caught on at Galaxy Garrison, because they hadn't been quite as careful as they should. And, at the end of it, Keith would always choose Shiro. He had every right too. 

The realization that Matt had no friends outside the two of them was jarring, but not quite shocking. He knew who he was. From unapproachable and socially inept at school to a downright asshole, Matt had long since begun to understand his situation. 

He went back to the Garrison again Monday. 

Matt had just slapped his head back down when the door fell against the wall with a grainy screech, wood clashing against the drywall. Katie had to step over the mess to even enter, scaling the fallen door and tossing the screw on Matt's bed. 

On his back, she threw the bare boned rods and screws of what at first glance appeared to be scrap metal. 

“I said, get up.”

\----

“How….” Matt murmured. 

Cradling the junk in his hands, palms flat open, careful not to crush the bare aluminum. 

“How'd you do this?” 

Pidge leaned against the wall, screwing the door back into place carefully, supporting it's weight against her hip and shoulder. She didn't look at Matt when she spoke, a habit everyone seemed to be picking up on lately. 

“It's pretty bare bones right now, so don't get excited,” she explained, nose wrinkled in concentration as she worked. “I started it so you could finish it and fix whatever the hell it was that messed you up so badly with him.” 

Scrap metal or not, Matt pulled the part close to his chest, holding it like a child, emotion suddenly overwhelming. 

“This won't fix anything,” he whispered, voice wet, letting the five metallic lines at the end of the bat cup his cheek, letting his eyes slip closed at the cool sensation of it. 

“You owe him this,” she said, perhaps a bit too roughly. “So don't screw it up, okay? You can't keep avoiding him. You guys are the only ones who know what you went through up there...you and dad, but Shiro needs you too. No one else is gonna get him like you.” 

He felt cold. 

“Do you...Katie, do you know?” 

Her hand faltered a moment on the screws, but her voice remained even. 

“He's your best friend. Don't screw up like this again.” 

Matt took a moment, lining the metal up along his skin, letting the bends match up to his joints, holding fast and tender. 

Who would've thought scrap could've been so valuable. 

Matt sobbed. 

“I have so much work to do.” 

\----

Keith seldom left Shiro alone, nowadays. 

The guilt manifested in both of them in different ways. Still, there were days where they both needed privacy, time away from each other, time to think and to feel with filters on and walls up. 

Shiro just wished it wouldn't be before a fucking thunderstorm. 

He felt embarrassed, bringing it up the counselors--he'd yet to admit it to Keith--how the rainstorms messed him up on a variant of degrees. Because it was stupid, right? He'd been tortured by aliens and robots and thrown into the vast void of space and he was terrified of fucking thunderstorms. 

The thing of it was, though? It wasn't the thunder. It was the rain. 

They lived in a goddamn shack in a fucking valley and when it rained it poured and flooded and soaked through the ceiling and once it's flooded there's nowhere left to _go._ In space, there had been no getting boxed in, no being trapped, because there were no walls left. Now Shiro could hardly sleep without waking every few hours and checking the rooms, trying not to wake Keith and Krolia, trying not to breakdown at the sight of a jacket hung across the door. 

Keith removed all the weapons from the house. 

Shiro couldn't even find the time to be ashamed about that. 

The knock on the door came as he was hunched in the bathroom, counting to ten through his teeth. 

At least Keith wouldn't judge what a fucking wreck he looked like--hair too long and stubble unshorn, an old t-shirt that fit too tightly and shorts he'd long since outgrown. 

Shaking legs walked him to the door. 

Yeah, he sorta wish he'd lost those, too. 

“Matt.” 

His voice was flat. Not a question. Not surprised. Not his own. 

On the doorstep, rocking back and forth on the heels of his boots, Matt motioned to the clouds behind him. 

“Hey, Takashi. Mind if I step in? Winds starting to kick up.” 

\----

Shiro made coffee, but he kept his eyes on the boxes on the table--one cardboard, unmarked, and the other wrapped delicately in green paper across a long slender box. Matt hadn't made clear the contents when he'd placed them in the house, and Shiro had no reason to be suspicious; he didn't really have a whole lot of reason to be trusting, either. 

_I don't wanna see your face._

The mugs rattled in his hand, black liquid tumbling over his palm like ink, scorching the skin there. 

He had to think about the pain before it came. 

Matt sat on the time-sunken couch, drumming his hands across his knees. The two months away from Shiro seemed to have done him good, he noticed a bit bitterly. His honey curls were long enough to be tucked up in a bun at the back of his head with only a few stragglers lingering at his temples artfully. His scars stood out against the radiance of his skin, darkened from the sun. The smile across his face was hung like the moon, cautious and baleful at the same time--he came with a built in warning system, and Shiro was still too foolish to take the past red flags into consideration. 

Shiro had told little to his therapist--issued to him by and employed by the galaxy garrison--about his relationship with Matt. He had, however, told her about a “girlfriend” and their relationship since he'd returned from space. 

She told him to avoid her at all costs. 

Shiro ran low on emotions nowadays, but the sight of Matt on his couch, feet bouncing anxiously and gnawing at his chapped lips with moon teeth felt alarmingly alien to him. Ironic, that way. 

Matt had obviously taken care in his appearance as well, no muscle mass lost, evident by the way his chest filled out the black vee neck he had looped across his torso, the smooth dip of his clavicle tracing down to the swell of his chest all too visible. Accompanied by the swell of his biceps against his open flannel shirt, the curve of his thighs against what were doubtless expensive jeans, artfully sliced and distressed--Shiro knew how much the Garrison was paying him--it was overwhelming. 

He finally got what Matt was talking about. 

Nothing felt real anymore. 

Shiro watched his own body move about the kitchen in the reflection of the rusted microwave, his consciousness seeming to float somewhere at the back of the room. Pitiful in his ill fitting clothes, mangy hair, and scruffed facial hair, Shiro wondered if there was a universe left out there where he didn't hate the vessel he was stuck in. 

Shiro, Shiro, Shiro, Shiro, and Shiro. 

How many were left out there? 

Why did this one have to be him? 

\----

“Sorry is a useless word, but I'm gonna use it anyway.”

Sitting across from one another, Shiro kept his eyes trained on the window just behind Matt’s head, watching the rain pour down and displace the earth. Shrapnel bombs of sand snapped against the windows as each droplet dove, dying them dark with the grit, effectively eclipsing what was left of the purple, rolling sky. 

“I wanted to fight something, wanted to blame someone, and you were there just ready to take me back because you're so perfect you're unreal--none of this is an excuse,” Matt groaned, throwing his head into his hands. 

Like Shiro, his nails were bit down the quicks, bloodied and bandaged in a few places, scars standing out star against his tanned skin. They're wrinkled now, from the sun and the war, pink across the knuckles and fingertips. He looked older, this way. They both did. They left kids, came back heroes--came back war torn and broken with a fancy title and a suitcase full of shame and guilt and anger and bullet wounds that wouldn't heal, not now, not again. 

Shiro wanted to reach out, loop a fist around Matt's wrist and drag his hands from his eyes, smooth out the crescent shaped marks placed above his eyebrows with his knuckles. 

He should hate Matt. He should ask him to leave. 

It wasn't that he was too nice; he was just too tired to fight for himself anymore. 

Matt dropped his own hands, letting them fall limp against his knees, and Shiro made no point to ignore the blotched red of his face, the swollen guilt of his lips; wet, wet. 

Shiro wanted to feel something. He should feel something. 

“You really had something, you know, with that normalcy thing? I just--it felt too much like we were just going to pretend space didn't happen and it did but now we aren't talking and it's all my fault and now it's _worse_ and I never, ever meant to hurt you, sweetheart, I'm so so sorry--it's such a fucking useless word--” 

“Matthew.” 

Matt froze, eyes trained deep on the coffee table, trembling in an attempt to regain composure. 

It was ironic in a lot of ways, he supposed. Shiro felt nothing and Matt felt much too much. 

“You don't have to apologize.” 

It wasn't necessarily what he wanted to say--still, the energy came and went in waves, and Shiro felt more battle weary from his own mind than he ever had in space. The rest that had been prescribed to him never seemed to come. 

“I'm not gonna say it's okay, because it's not,” he sighed, slouching on his knees, rubbing a hand over the silver stubble on his chin. Watching Matt sink in on himself, he felt something nearer to a twinge of guilt, a tingle of pain echoing out in the hollow of his chest. Behind Matt, the rain hit the window with smacks timed to the way Matt's own face bled tears, slapping useless against the expensive fabric of his jeans.

“But,” he continued. “I understand. This has been hard on all of us. You in particular.” 

Matt gave a self deprecating snort, ponytail bobbing with the bitter efforts. His tear tracks, when bared to the light, appeared more searing and painful than his own scars. Shiro hated seeing them on his face. 

“You more than anyone,” Matt corrected. “I have no right--” 

From the table stand beside the recliner, Shiro produced a pamphlet of papers, dropping them atop the packages Matt had deposited on the table. 

He watched Matt lean forward, watched his face crunch in concentration--a look that was familiar on a stranger's face, took him back to early moments in their acquaintance. Ones where Matt would saddle up beside him in the library, squint at the physics sheet on Shiro's lap with a cool confidence that had Shiro stuttering, blushing, stumbling. From across the table, he could make out the highlighted, underlined phrases that his therapist had addressed: 

_Emotional numbness and avoidance of places, **people** , and activities that are reminders of the trauma._

_Easily irritated and angered._

_Persistent and exaggerated negative beliefs or expectations about oneself, others, or the world (e.g., “I am bad,” “No one can be trusted,” "The world is completely dangerous")._

“I needed time,” Matt said. 

Behind his voice was an unfamiliar emotion--not the hopeful, cool and kind Matt from their early days and not the angry war torn one from months before. He was soft. He was scared. 

“I still do--I will--need more time to fix all the things wrong with me. But, I'd like to make things right with you first, if you'd let me.” 

“I'm as fucked up as you,” Shiro deadpanned. “It's exhausting being the bigger person. You know that. I know you felt it and I know that's why you gave up on me and we have to….” 

His train of thought derailed, sliding out the window into the storm, shattering the glass and assisting the water in its break-in. Had to what? Keep fighting? Fighting for what? 

What was worth fighting for anymore? 

“Shiro?” 

“I'm so tired,” he huffed, half a laugh as he let his forehead fall into his own chapped palm, trying not to appear as weak as he felt. It was exhausting, hiding what he felt. It was exhausting feeling numb. It was exhausting being nothing at all, and wishing you were something. 

“Why’d you come by?” he sighed, leaning back, trying to force himself to look at Matt's general direction--he'd mentioned before, how much it had bothered him, the lack of emotion and the lack of _looking_ at him. His gaze ended up somewhere in the vicinity of his ear, his expression pinched. He wasn't quite ready to see the feelings folded in Matt's sweet amber eyes. 

Feelings felt less like drowning and more like a one punch knockout every time, nowadays, knocking Shiro on his fucking ass and putting him out of commission like a tantrum throwing toddler. 

“Brought you your things,” Matt chirped, leaning forward with electric hands and hopeful fingers to pluck at the boxes on the table. “Your Garrison stuff that you left at the house--” 

Shiro didn't hesitate to reach in once Matt opened the flap, revealing that these were things that hadn't just been in Shiro's Garrison trunk--these were the things Shiro had trusted in Matt's possession, given away as gifts, left at his place because, at one time, it had been more of a home than his had been. 

On top, thin and wrinkled, lay his black tank. 

His fist cinched around it of its own volition. 

“This is yours,” he insisted, stretching his left hand between them. “This isn't mine.”

Matt stared with a pathetic glance between them, soft and resigned, as he watched the fabric stretch across Shiro's thick fingers, the cotton pressed thin to his palm. 

“Takashi,” he warned, but Shiro's eyes had already cut back to the box, showing visible trinkets they'd collected from diners over the years--plastic candy necklaces and stick on alien tattoos. 

It stung--he had enough sense left to recognize that wasn't Matt's intention, but it didn't mean Shiro couldn't feel their half-stitched bond rip at the seams, fresh blood soaking between them and filling their boots the same way the squish of the rain hit the window, soaking and spoiling everything in Shiro's environment until it was difficult to breathe. 

This box wasn't Matt's attempt at reparations. This box was Matt's final goodbye. 

“I really wanted to show you the second box,” Matt admitted, eyes downcast as Shiro still clutched the shirt between them. 

On the table sat the rectangular box, green wrapping paper stiff and clean where it sat on Keith's coffee stained living room table. 

“What's in the box?” 

\----

Shiro had long since become obsessed with the idea of normalcy. 

Once upon a time, he'd felt it, found it, back at an institution so broken they'd forgone using his name--stuffed between the stacks of the library, a boy had shuffled their hands like cards, and for the first time Shiro had felt a little more human and a little less machine. 

Years later, with the same problem but different circumstances, Shiro couldn't make sense of how the two of them had ended up here, so far away from the normalcy they'd taken for granted. Somehow, the place that Shiro had felt most like himself had become a warzone. 

Matt had been the last person Shiro had trusted the entirety of himself with. 

Now Matt was adding more. 

“This is an arm.” 

“It's not finished, obviously,” Matt clarified as Shiro stared at the skeleton of bolts and copper wiring on the tabletop as though it were a million miles away. “I wanted to hook it up first before I added the fluff--if that's okay with you. We don't have to do it today, or like, ever, I just thought--” 

“No,” Shiro interrupted, fighting to school his features into something that resembled gratitude, but failed miserably. “I just didn't think I'd have one of these again. I turned down the tech the Garrison offered me.” 

“That's the beauty of this bad boy,” Matt smirked, crooked enough to reveal canines as he lunged forward to pluck the metal up into his palms. “This guy is entirely mechanical--all simple machines. Can't be hacked, can't be a weapon. It will rely on still using the galra shoulder anchor you've got as a base, but other than that, this baby is as prehistoric as it gets. I figure if it works we can see what functions you need during a trial run, then we can skin it up--” 

Matt stopped, smile dropping, eyes cutting back up to Shiro.

“Unless, of course, you'd rather stay like this.” 

Shiro hadn't given it much thought. It seemed like his options had either been military tech or an appearance prosthetic, leaving little room in between for normalcy and necessity. Matt had truly covered all the bases here. 

That being said, he'd adjusted well to single handedly handling functions during day to day duties. YouTube tutorials illustrating how to tie his shoes and button his shirts had been stellar. That being said, it didn't negate the fact he still woke up some nights, blinding reaching around in the bed, only to realize there were two things missing, not one. Still, between applying eyeliner and the inconvenience that was voice commands, there were limitations to his current design.

There was still that feeling, though, that came with the absence of his arm--being a clone was bad enough; being part robot was worse. 

Still, Matt looked almost hopeful, almost tender the way he cradled the skeleton arm to his chest--this was his olive branch. 

This was their chance at normalcy. 

“Let's give it a shot.” 

\----

“You do know I don't have my license, right?” 

Two weeks into their testing, Matt thought they needed a weekend getaway to truly test the arm. 

Shiro knew full well it was an excuse, evident in their shared nervous glances and low gazed expressions, but said nothing, even as Matt, from the passenger seat of the truck, kept a camera trained on the joints of Shiro's arm as they pushed the stick into gear.

“You drove a motorcycle while we were at school!” Matt snorted, and from Shiro's peripheral, he could make out the motion of him carding a tanned hand through his hair. He'd shaved it recently--an undercut, not unlike Shiro's old look, the top naturally springing to attention in a way that seemed loyal to their old personalities. 

He looked older, in a way that made Shiro avert his eyes and pretend he wasn't seeing it, wasn't watching their old lives dissolve. The Garrison had given them both leave for as long as they required it, and Matt had taken advantage of the break to allow himself the grunge phase often soldiers weren't allowed to project. In addition to the shave, he'd pierced his ears--nothing fancy, two simple, silver studs in his lobes--but everytime Shiro caught sight of them his mouth went dry, staring unabashedly until the fingertips of his new arm twitched against his will. 

Over his white tee was Shiro's leather jacket, beginning to fade and crack with overuse--it didn't work well with the arm in its current design, no long sleeves did. Matt had since taken to looking after it like a prized possession, draping it over Shiro's shoulders whenever they had a moment of peace. 

“A motorcycle is a lot different than a car, Matthew.” 

Matt twitched a bit in his seat, coughing into his shoulder anxiously before adjusting the camera again. 

“Who's gonna arrest space hero Takashi Shirogane, anyway?” 

“No one,” Shiro replied coolly. “But they will arrest two punk twinks with no form of ID on them.” 

“Well,” Matt sighed, letting the camera fall back into his lap. “Shit.” 

\---- 

To Matt's knowledge, Shiro had only been to the beach once before, and that had been on a summer vacation with the Holt’s several years ago. 

To Matt, who didn't care much for sand, sun,or saltwater, the ocean held little appeal in comparison to the vast void of space. Shiro, however, despite his newfound phobia of water, allowed himself to toe off his sneakers and place his feet in the early tide--just deep enough that the foam grazed his ankles, sand grains sliding down his calves. In the sunlight, he seemed paler and thinner than the strong commander that he had been introduced to in space. 

With his long white hair and untamed scruff, Shiro seemed wearier than Matt had previously realized. 

“The air is nice here,” he murmured, stretching both mismatched arms away from his side, his fingers dancing in the breeze, blowing his too-long bangs back from his face.

He had so much work to do. 

\----

The cabin was small. A kitchen, a bathroom, a bed, a couch in the living room. Two stories, two rooms each, little more than a wooden matchbox--Matt found it charming. Shiro spent most of the day opening and relatching the windows. 

Alarmingly domestic, they kept up the guise of research, Matt watching Shiro perform daily tasks with his arm, taking notes of its failings and of Shiro's suggestions for improvement. 

There was something lovely about sitting up on the sink in pajamas, unabashedly watching Shiro shave his neck with fine precision and a guarded expression. It was the sort of thing Shiro himself used to dream about, letting it out at two am bursts, quiet whispers in Matt's hair when they were younger. 

Matt had to swallow back on questions that would ruin everything. 

“Any issues?” 

“Besides the fact that this is terrifying?” Shiro laughed, pulling the razor away from his neck from his needle thin fingertips. “I'm noticing the wrist doesn't turn that well. Same for when I brush my teeth.” 

“I'll see if Katie has any bright idea for how to add more pivots without making it too boxy,” he nodded, slipping off the counter. “Um, let me know how the shower goes? The copper won't rust.” 

\----

They kept up the guise of research. 

They did.

They managed it dancing around each other in the kitchenette, careful to schedule out bathroom times to avoid mishaps and wandering eyes. Switching out every night in rotation between the couch and the bed, Shiro's arm taped down to his side in an attempt to prevent him from crushing it. It'll be easier once the outside is in place, once they've finished working on it, they can make it cosmetic. 

Matt spent most of the day watching his own right hand, keeping track of the functions it performed without his knowledge in an attempt to help Shiro transition over. The way he swept his bangs back, picking certain popcorn pieces out of the pail, washing his face with the pads of his fingers only. 

He spent the other half of his day attempting to navigate the house left handed without being caught by Shiro in some selfish attempt at empathy. 

To their credit, they've melted a bit. Dinners weren't unbearable, even if Shiro only stared at his plate most nights, chatting Matt up with jokes so he could scrape most of it into the bin unnoticed--Matt noticed. He didn't know what to say, so it didn't matter much if he noticed or not. At night, they watched movies--Shiro watched movies and Matt watched the way Shiro moved his hand during the movie. 

Matt wondered what it would be like, that is, how well the hand would work of holding. 

He wondered if he'd ever let Matt find that out.   
\----

“So, Keith told me you went on a date with Allura.” 

The water glass that had been on its way to Shiro's bow mouth paused in the air, before beginning it's descent back to the table. The stiffness of his posture seemed to crack for a moment, the pressure of his awkward smile breaking the foundation of his stern countenance. 

“He did?” 

“Well,” Matt admitted, scratching absently at his arm. “I think it more of a pity FYI, between the ‘fuck you’s’ and an attempt to get me to get over you.” 

“Glad you didn't take the hint,” Shiro snorted, keeping his eyes downcast at the table. 

He looked smaller, in more ways than one. Matt had been preparing larger portions in an attempt to get Shiro to eat more, piling his plate unearthly high--even still, he put his new arm to use boxing away the leftovers for three meals in advance, making Matt's heart pinch in worry. He'd taken to the habit of curling his shoulders in, dwarfing his size by a third, even with the massive mass of his bicep, hardly appearing to have atrophied by time. Head down, too, with that long white hair spilling across his downcast eyes. 

Shiro had been shy, to a degree, when they'd met, possessing a sort of self awareness Matt hadn't developed yet. This wasn't that sort of situation, and though he could only speculate on the numerous causes for his anxiety, Matt felt the needled guilt for all of them. 

“I asked her out,” Shiro admitted, drumming his metallic fingers against his thick thigh. “Before I…” 

He trailed off with a wave of his pale peach hand, and Matt nodded to signify that, yeah, he got it. They hadn't talked about his mood, the state he'd been in when Matt showed up, but it felt good to even acknowledge it like this. It felt truthful. 

Honesty and normalcy. A sort of compromise. 

“Took her to the carnival and she was,” Shiro smiled here, to himself, biting back on it enough to make Matt's chest hurt in a shameful way. Shiro deserved to smile, deserved to smile about her. “She loved it, Matt, you should've seen her consume the fair food and then load the tilt-a-whirl without a goddamn thought.” 

Matt nodded. He couldn't do much else. 

Shiro smiled again in response, softer this time, ticked his chin toward the ground. 

“She, uh, spent the rest of the night asking my advice on how to woo Romelle. Which apparently helped because they're very saccharine around each other right now. They've got matching rings.” 

Any anxiety Matt had left was plagued by peals of pity, both of his hands coming up to cover his mouth and smother the undeserved laughter. That--that was rough. 

“I'm so sorry,” Matt breathed, his voice still upsettingly jovial from where it was masked behind his hands. 

Shiro, in all honesty, shrugged as if unbothered by the story, if not a little embarrassed. Perhaps he'd had the time to process it, catalog it safely away. 

“For the best,” he sighed, resting his hand on his copper knuckles, fixing his water glass with a look. He paused, licking at his chapped lips, his brain visibly working overtime with the twitch of his eyebrows before his slate eyes cut bravely up to Matt's. “She's not really my type, after all.”  
\---- 

“I think we need to admit there's no magic fix for this.” 

The allen wrench in Matt's fist went flying across the room, making his fingers wind up in the wiring of Shiro's metallic bicep. Hunched over with glasses pressed close to his nose, he was half thankful he couldn't see Shiro's expression. He just sort of wished Shiro couldn't see his. 

“I'm still mad at you,” Shiro said--it was that deadpan inflection again, not soft spoken and not angry. “I might be for awhile--but do you think maybe this is the best were going to get?” 

Matt needed a moment, untangling his fingers from the wiring, pulling away until his fingers lingered just near his wrist. 

“I wanna make this up to you. I wanna make this right.” 

“You certainly can't make it left. I've still got this one.” 

Matt choked, fighting back the incredulous smile threatening at his mouth, fighting the urge to hide his pink face against Shiro's shoulder. 

It was odd--to laugh, to joke, to smile, when everything still tasted so bittersweet on their tongues. The cabin had been a perfect backdrop, a set of domestic normalcy that kept their faux smiles coming, but there was a faraway dream at the back of Matt's mind, almost real, of Shiro pressed against his side and smothering laughter as he fell apart in stitches. What had started as an itch in their fingertips to grab sharp hold of one another had morphed into the simple need of closeness. They'd both outgrown the physicality of their own bodies since they'd left the atmosphere, since they'd pedaled out of town. 

It wasn't enough that they were alive. 

There was more to life than breathing, existing. 

Matt wanted Shiro to be happy, more than anything, because he deserved happiness. He deserved the world and people that loved him. 

Whatever Shiro wanted, Matt was going to give him. 

“So, what's your suggestion?” he murmured, thankful for the privacy provided in the caging of Shiro's bicep, still fiddling with the wrench without actually tinkering on anything. 

Shiro's breathing had become more labored, the exhaustion of emotion setting in. Over exerting himself mentally had become a theme in their past few days alone, causing him to curl up in bed without sleeping, without thinking, just becoming a bit of nothingness to ease the pain. That too was tiring. Shiro saw it as a sort of marathon sprint--he could fight whatever sickness was going on in his head the same way you trained a sprained muscle once it had healed, building the strength back again by pushing it to the limit. 

“I guess I'm giving you some options,” he mused, voice slipping back into his deadpanned commander voice, unfeeling despite the gravity of his words. “I don't want to feel guilty for wanting to be with you, wanting to be more than friends because this--it feels like walking on glass, and holding myself back and down isn't something I'm great at right now.” 

Matt's stomach shifted and sank like the tide, dizzy in its admission. So, Shiro didn't hate him. 

“That's not to say if you don't want to be involved right now that I don't want you as a friend ever, I just--It's like dealing in extremes right now, hot or cold, and there's no room for smothering this when I think I'm supposed to be feeling the highs.” 

Matt nodded in understanding, the tufts of his hair grazing across Shiro's shoulder on accident. 

“So,” Matt sighed, heavy, so heavy. “My options are be your boyfriend or disappear, for now?” 

Stomach clenching visibly, Shiro screwed up his lip. It didn't sound pretty. It didn't sound kind. It sounded shitty and manipulative and it's not what Shiro wanted to be, but pretending wasn't something he could stomach anymore. Being normal and being honest were things they were both craving, right? Matt wanted this, or he wouldn't be here, right? 

Unless he didn't want Shiro. Unless he just wanted to be absolved from his guilt. 

“You're still mad,” Matt reiterated, pulling away finally to at least face Shiro, eye contact optional. “And I deserve it. And I think that there isn't....there isn't a magic fix for this. I fucked up.” 

“We fucked up,” Shiro agreed with a smile. “You had every right to respond the way you did, Matt, because I didn't know what he'd done to you--”

“He's not you,” Matt covered swiftly, a mantra he'd repeated until it was true in his head, until he'd learned to trust this Shiro again. His Shiro, but different. 

“But to you, we were the same. The consolidation is dangerous. I get that.” 

They were smart kids, turning into dumbfuck adults. It happened to the best of them. They knew better, Matt supposed, than to believe in firework kisses and unconditional love. Domesticity painted pretty pictures of the future, forgiveness and normalcy and two soft hands to hold instead of one. 

They were both broken, maybe beyond repair. And fuck the honesty Matt cared so much about because everytime they poked at the scar that was their fucking bond it bled out all over their fingers, festered and infected no matter how many copper wires Matt wrapped around the frame, no matter how many brownies Matt forced in Shiro's direction, no matter how many _I love you’s_ the two of them choked back on throughout the day. 

They'd had their fairytale forever ago in a dorm room the night before a rocket launch, sweeping hands and sloppy kisses in an attempt to make their love last in the exciting ice of space--and what? All it took was one fucking artificial sentience to tear them apart? 

Matt had let that happen. He'd let it happen to Shiro. He'd let it plant the seeds of anger in his heart until it was a goddamn fucking forest and he'd had no sympathy left for his boyfriend who'd fucking died. 

Pathetic. Matt was pathetic, and Shiro deserved the world. 

His voice was wet by the time he'd spoken. 

“Too kind, Takashi,” he laughed, scrubbing at his face with grease monkey hands, smearing the black across his freckled skin. 

The gravitational pull between them was flipped on, fucking all that binary star shit to hell as Shiro reached out to collide--a gentle touch, his left hand on Matt's elbow, a stiff thumb stroking reassuringly on the soft skin of his inner arm until Matt's chest felt like it would cave in from the hyperventilation. 

Shiro's voice was soft when he spoke, but his eyes were watching Matt with a cool confidence as he fell apart in the space between them, his black hole heart ripping him apart. 

“You don't have to decide tonight--” 

“You know-know- _know_ I'm no-not- _not_ leaving you,” Matt huffed between tears, nearly screaming, hardly finding the time to be embarrassed by the breakdown, not when Shiro's metallic hand regained function and placed itself on Matt's thigh, innocent and reassuring, even with Shiro's blank expression. 

“Okay,” he murmured, beginning to rise. He didn't tell Matt not to cry, didn't tell him to stop screaming, because he had every right to do those things. 

It had been a long few months. 

It had been a long life. 

Tomorrow would be new. 

\----

Matt woke up the next morning on the couch, throat sore, face vaguely swollen from tears. 

There was no new lease on life in the air, no refreshing calmness to wash over him. Yes, today was different, somehow, but it wasn't at all, not really. 

The windows across the cabin floor had been opened, a stark change to their usually boxed up life, and Matt kept his head against the cushion for a moment and listening to the heavy waves crash against the shore outside before retreating again. 

When he opened his eyes again, they focused up on the coffee table, on the little water cup holding dandelion stems before his face. 

“Morning.” 

Shiro was leaned against the wall, looking more like himself than the night before. The flat countenance on his face had evaporated, been evicted by the small nervous smile and honest eyes that Matt recalled from a lifetime ago. The windows were clearly a gesture for Matt's benefit, and Shiro seemed nervous for a plethora of reasons now, his fingers drumming anxiously across his stomach. 

“Morning,” Matt called back, watching his metallic fingers click one by one with a hypnotic sort of gaze. “Feel alright?” 

Shiro nodded, taking a step closer to the couch, but no more. Matt took it upon himself to rise on sleeping vertigo legs and cross the distance between them, stopping short so they were little more than an arms length apart. 

“The flowers are nice,” Matt chirped, wrapping his arms around himself to ward off the salt breeze climbing in through the window. “You take a walk this morning?” 

Shiro shrugged. “Did a perimeter check after you went to bed.” 

So, he hadn't slept well, then. 

“It's a little overcast,” Shiro sighed, glancing out the open windows, his fingers beginning a rapid dance against his own hip. “If you wanna go swimming--” 

“Takashi.” 

It wasn't fireworks. It wasn't over the moon love struck. It wasn't a moment without words because, fuck, Matt needed those more than anything right now. 

“Honesty,” Matt reminded. “Normalcy.” 

Shiro looked at him with more emotion than he had since he'd arrived here, more alertness than Matt had seen in months. This was his Shiro, his _boyfriend--_ even if the word felt trite on his tongue--all grown and changed and survived. 

Shiro swallowed, a comic and exaggerated motion, not daring for a second to look away from Matt's face. 

“Can I touch you?” 

It wasn't fireworks. It was a suckerpunch, hard and breathless and fucked and it reminded Matt of a moment months ago were everything was painted red and Shiro felt more like an enemy than the boy he loved. 

Matt stepped close, shoulders thrown back, and in so many ways he was aware of how ridiculous he looked with his sleep crazed hair and rumpled flannel, expression hard and scared all at once. He walked up to Shiro like he was about to be slaughtered, eyes slipped closed and waiting for the brush of lips from a body he'd never kissed. 

Under his eye there was pressure, the swift swipe of a thumb, calloused and static with friction, tracing out the lines of Matt's swollen face. The hand ran a loop, curving over his ear and reacting back to Matt's neck, Matt's shoulder, Matt's lower back. 

Like dice, one, two, three, four, then five drops of needle thin fingers tapped across the back of Matt's skull, cradling his head so lovingly, it was hard to believe it's iced steel. 

Shiro didn't pull Matt close--instead, he stepped forward, and Matt nearly broke again with his face pressed against Shiro's shoulder. 

This time, it was so different. 

This was their final reunion scene. 

Matt didn't bother to clap Shiro's back, to smile softly, not this time. He curled both his fists in the back of his shirt, holding Shiro so tight against him he might snap, until he could feel Shiro's own heart vibrate in his throat. He mashed his face into his shoulder, choking down all the bitterness that was still there, embarrassingly still resident in his chest. 

He took a moment. He committed it to his memory, replaced the old with the new. The metallic smell of his arm and the salt sea air and the cold press of his bare feet against the cabin floor. Against him, Shiro shook like the tide, shivering and overwhelmed and damned near bursting while his tender hands stayed still against Matt, held fragile like glass. 

They didn't kiss. 

It wasn't fireworks. 

It was a second reunion scene, a final reunion scene, better, better, better, best. 

It was forgiveness. 

It was enough. 

\----

Matt attempted to pull away and ended up yelping instead, pressing his face back to Shiro's chest in an attempt to not pull his hair out of his scalp. 

“Shit,” Shiro snorted, raising his right elbow to test and confirm a hypothesis. “I, uh, think my hand is stuck.” 

Matt sighed. “Needed a trim, anyhow, I guess. Let's try and walk up the stairs, yeah? Clippers are under the sink.”

\----

They regressed to normalcy. 

They left the beach without swimming, bags packed and scared smiles as they left with a jar full of sea shells and a notebook full of scribbles. 

It was terrifying, yeah, leaving. Matt and Shiro weren't idiots. They knew they ran the risk of erasing all they've done here and relapsing to ground zero. There was more at risk here than titles and relationships--Matt knew that if Shiro went back to that shack in the desert, there were numbers to consider, pamphlets of proof on the table that meant going forward wasn't as easy as it seemed. 

They'd be sick again. It was a guarantee. Neither of them have intentions, though, of letting fears stop the binary star collision happening between them. 

The drive home was full of quiet touches--no kissing, not now, not yet--and Shiro driving one handed for practicalities sake. 

It was with one hand that Matt wrote down results--Shiro's hand does a rather decent job of holding, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading ♡

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! This is the fifth draft of this fic ya'll and I'm so tired and honestly am not sure how to continue it. But I'm going to. I got that writers block real good. Pls comment and kudos ♡


End file.
